Saint means that you carry the huge blessing of being “in Christ,” which means that you have already been given everything you need for life and godliness (2 Pet. There are two identities we must all carry: saint and sinner. It is important for your money sanity, and, in fact, sanity in every area of your life, that you live with a biblical sense of identity. What struggles of heart have the power to produce trouble in your finances? 2. Debt demonstrates that your heart controls your use of money, not your income. If you ask money to do what it was never meant to do, that is, to satisfy your heart, you will tend to spend what you do not have on what money cannot buy, and your income will tend to be less than your expenditures. He was always after that next “If only I had _,” but he never got the elusive happiness he was after all John got was deeper and deeper in debt. He had consistently spent his money in search of a dream that he told himself would finally make him happy. John failed to understand that in both subtle and not so subtle ways, he had asked money to be his personal savior. To ask money to do any of those things will always lead to money troubles. Money can’t and was never intended to give you life. Money isn’t meant to be your source of comfort when you are hurting or of hope when you are feeling discouraged. Money can’t buy you a satisfied heart, money can’t buy you peace and happiness, and money can’t buy you a reason to get up in the morning. To the degree that you ask money to provide for you what it was never meant to provide, to that degree you will find it very hard to be careful and disciplined in your use of money. Your financial life is always determined more by the desires of your heart than by the size of your income. Financial matters always concern the heart. Following are summaries of six areas where I am sure John is not alone. So I want to consider the things that John either struggled with or failed to understand. Although most of us haven’t become as cynical and angry as John, he represents many more of us than we would tend to think.įilled with biblical wisdom and aimed at debunking the false promises people often believe about money, this book by best-selling author Paul David Tripp gives a fresh understanding of money through the lens of the gospel. I lost contact with John after he quit counseling with me, because he didn’t like what I was saying to him. In fact, if he hadn’t been threatened by his wife, he wouldn’t have been talking to me at all. He hadn’t come to me as a means of taking responsibility for his choices. In John’s way of interpreting his own drama, he was a victim of the circumstances. But the longer I listened to his story, the more I was struck that the one person John never blamed was himself. His life had been hard, the struggle was exhausting and discouraging, and it had been devastating to the peace of his family. At first it meant that he quit having any personal time with the Lord, but it wasn’t long before he found reasons for not going to Sunday services, and eventually he quit believing that God cared for him or would ever help him.Īs I listened to John, my heart went out to him. As the years went on, the financial struggle, the debt, and the burden of stress that it had placed on his family had laid waste to John’s faith in God. He hated that his life had been such a struggle and that the struggle had such a negative effect on his marriage. He was mad that the jobs he’d had never seemed to last very long. John was angry that he had never had a job that paid what he thought he deserved and that would finance the kind of life he had dreamed of. He had been in debt for his entire adult life. He had started out our time together by saying this: “I’m here to get your advice because my wife told me to get help or she would leave, but I don’t want you to talk to me about God.” John was in paralyzing debt. He hated the comfortable lifestyle of so many people around him, and he had long since given up any practical belief in the goodness of God. His view of his life was that he had been dealt a bad hand. He sat in front of me, bitter and discouraged.
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